


Five Years On

by Piper



Category: The Town (2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-22
Updated: 2010-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-13 23:49:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piper/pseuds/Piper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"A Statute of Limitations: an enactment in a common law legal system that sets forth the maximum time after an event that legal proceedings based on that event may be initiated."</p><p>Claire Keesey has a five year wait on her hands and for all she knows, she could be wrong about that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Years On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Addison R (beyond_belief)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beyond_belief/gifts).



> [COMING SOON! *Insert Yuletide Panic: HERE!*]
> 
> For now, in short, this year was the first time I utilised the chat and the Hippo-service, and I must say... it was a HUGE help. <3 to you all!

Google continued to be the most useful of all inventions. Claire didn't have a law degree of any sort and the degree she'd started, anthropology, was unfinished. She knew very little about the intricacies of the law even though she'd worked as a bank manager. 'Don't steal from us' and 'give the robbers what they want and let the police take care of the rest' were as far into the law as bank management training went. However, thanks to a truly horrible Tommy Lee Jones movie and the twenty-four hour cable news cycle, she knew two legal phrases: Double Jeopardy (a procedural defense forbidding a defendant from being tried again on the same charges post acquittal or conviction) and Statute of Limitations ( the maximum time in which to prosecute after an crime).

The first didn't help her much once she looked it up to confirm what it meant, but in the second she found potential. Claire tried to not to appear out of place as she hunched over a computer in the Harvard law library. _'What is the statute of limitations on bank robbery in Massachusetts?'_ she typed into Google and hit enter. There were thousands of responses of course, but she simply clicked the first on the list.

“Banks are federal, so it becomes a federal crime? So it should be five years...” she mused aloud, trying to understand the dense text of the PDF file she'd opened.

“It's not that simple, actually,” said a voice from the next study carrel over. Claire looked up, finding a twenty-something, mousey looking girl in glasses looking at her. “You have the five year statute for your federal crimes, yeah, but there're conditions. For instance, if the criminal's been indited and they're on the run, then they can't run out the statute by staying on the run for five years. Also, it is a federal crime, but if the crime is committed along with another one, like murder, there's no statute, because murder doesn't have one and it overshadows the robbery.”

Figuring the law student was better than Google, Claire nodded. “And what if they're on the run with no indictment?”

“Then the clock starts ticking-- well, I mean, without knowing the details of the case, I can't say exactly. Whose class are you in? First year, right?”

“No I'm not-- I'm just doing some research.”

In the end she saved a few links and left the library without the concrete answers she'd hoped for.

\---

Five years was a long time, and Claire kept waiting for her feelings to change. _She_ certainly did. She was required to disclose exactly what had happened at her old bank, making her entirely unemployable in the same career. She would have been lying had she said that bank work was her dream job, but it was the only job she'd known. There was a period of adjustment while she came to terms with the idea that she would never work in a bank again. (

Her savings began to dwindle after a year and she was reluctant to go through the motions of applying for unemployment. It wasn't as if she was sitting at home doing nothing, but volunteering really was thankless when it came to monetary reward. She managed a smile every time she walked past the dedication plaque that sat outside the MacRay rink, but the knowledge that she'd done something good wasn't feeding her. Being forced to remember everything each time she arrived for a shift also wasn't helping the time to pass. She only kept going for the sake of the MacRays-- one MacRay, at least.

Someone eventually offered her a paying job with the Boys and Girls Club which that she took with some trepidation. Office work for a non profit was a different way of giving than volunteering to play with kids after school, but she needed the income. Even so, she didn't once regret the rink; not even towards the end of a year when she was sitting on her couch sucking noodles out of a ramen bowl.

“You don't sound like a native,” one of her coworkers commented the day she started.

“I'm from Ohio,” she admitted. “Cleveland.”

The woman laughed. “From one shithole to another?”

“Something like that, yeah.” Granted, she'd never really seen Charlestown as a “shithole”. It was just as colorful as its residents, was all.

That wasn't the first time she'd been called out on her tunie status. There were instances when being able to speak properly made it impossible to get anything done.

“Why're you snooping around for? Who're you to be asking shit about Dougie, you tunie-bitch?”

 _The bank manager. The hostage. The Girl. The bitch who slept with him. The bitch who didn't give him up to the FBI. The bitch who lo--_ Claire shook her head and held up a hand. “Forget it. Just take my card... if you hear anything from him-- call me if you can help.”

“Get the fuck out.” Krista Coughlin slammed the door in Claire's face. Claire’s business card with the Boys and Girls Club logo fell down onto the stoop. Claire didn't bother to stoop over and pick it up.

Didn't matter where she went, she never got the exact answers she was looking for.

\---

Asking around wasn't going to work, that much was obvious. The older generation knew her, but not well enough that they would talk. She always found that funny, that they knew her well enough to trust her to play with their children and grand children, but not well enough that she could ask them questions about their sons and fathers-- the bank robbers.

Claire fell back on her bed and closed her eyes. There were times when she would just take a moment for herself and replay every little moment in her mind. She went back as far as the morning of the robbery and stunned herself time and time again when she remembered that she'd spent thirty minutes that day deciding on what color shirt to wear. She remembered putting on lipstick, tying up her hair, and looking everywhere for her keys before finding them in the bread box. The walk to the bank had been long and uneventful, and work had started off with the same bad coffee and small talk about the Red Sox it always did. She might have been a tunie, but she could talk baseball just as well as any other Bostonian.

It hadn't even been half way into the day when masks and guns had flooded her vision. The two things she remembered most vividly were contrasts. There was fear. Of course there was fear. If you weren't scared during a bank robbery then there was something broken inside of you, or so said the therapist she'd been seeing. The FBI had suggested that she see one and had even given her a name. Eventually paranoia had gotten the best of her and Claire had stopped seeing the FBI recommended doctor, suspecting that maybe the doctor-patient confidentiality agreement hadn't extended as far as a certain Agent Frawley. Paranoia had, unfortunately, replaced the fear.

But somewhere between the fear and the paranoia had come and overwhelming sense of love. She put her hands over her face and tried to focus on that, but it was hard to remember how it felt after three years.

\---

When the zamboni broke down, Claire scraped together the money to have it fixed. When the roof started leaking after a heavy snow storm Claire filled out paperwork and argued with people until it was repaired. When both sharpeners in the pro shop went out, Claire scraped together the money to buy two more. She was dedicated to the MacRay Rink, even at the expense of other community projects.

She pulled her coat tighter around her thin frame. It was cold, but she still liked to sit and watch the kids. It was synchronised skating today, and lines of little girls stumbling across the ice never failed to make her smile after a day at work.

“Which one's yours?” A voice spoke up beside her.

“None of them. I just... I like to watch.” Claire glanced up, speaking again once she realised how decidedly inappropriate her answer sounded alone. “I mean, I used to volunteer here, and it's nice to see what they're doing now that they have actual ice.”

“God bless Doris MacRay whoever the hell she is,” the mother answered, crossing herself and kissing the gold cross around her neck. “My little girl's skating and the boy's playing hockey instead of running around the streets after school.

Claire smiled and moved her feet down from the wall she'd had them resting on, revealing the dedication plaque that was almost as good as hers. “I couldn't agree more, ma'am.” Her fingers traced over the name. “They're almost done, aren't they?”

“Mmmhmm, but then my Lucy has her _private_ lessons,” she explained and Claire almost laughed. Private lessons cost a dollar a minute and Claire could tell the woman was proud to say she could afford them. The mother reached into her purse and pulled out two tangerines. “Lucy eats in between. Four years and they've kept this rink up so nicely, haven't they?”

 _Lord knows it hasn't been easy._ Claire watched the woman peel fruit for her daughter. Her eyes traded between the plaque and the fruit in her hands.

Five years couldn't come quickly enough.

\---

It was a wonder that she'd never been to Florida. She came from an upper-middle class family with three girls and never once had they made the trek to Disney World as kids. “Cedar Point's the same thing, and cheaper,” her father liked to say. So Florida remained something of a mystery to her and though she wouldn't admit it to anyone, the state was two things in her mind: half Miami, half Disney World. The intricacies of what laid between those two places were never something she'd thought about.

Tangerine, Florida, with it's eight hundred and twenty six people nestled between three lakes, wasn't what Claire had imagined. But as soon as she stepped out of her car, she could see why someone might choose it as a place to hide away. A person could have hidden in the trees themselves if they'd wanted to; they were overgrown and bunched together on Lake Ola Drive and she could barely see the house numbers, much less the houses themselves. The wind blew through the trees, cicadas buzzed, and every so often she'd hear a shout from the lake and the rev of a jet ski owned by one of the private waterfront homesi. Even with the occasional artificial noise it wasn't the Florida she'd imagined, but she could see herself loving it.

Claire turned the rental car into a driveway she'd almost missed because of the curtain of trees. The silent approach of the Prius wouldn't alert anyone that she was approaching, leaving the quiet ambiance of the small community undisturbed. There was a massive house, complete with a four car garage and a pool, that sat back and away from the lake, but Claire drove past the opulence, towards the hazy image of a raised shanty by the water.

Admittedly, she wasn't _sure_ about the law. She'd been there, at the first robbery, but thank God she hadn't been at the second. No one died when they'd taken her and she couldn't imagine Doug shooting anyone, much less killing them, even if she'd witnessed the first with her own eyes. Five years wasn't a hard fast rule, only applying so long as someone hadn't _died_. She couldn't say for sure, but the alternative was never seeing him again because there was always that chance that he'd messed up so badly that that length of time would never apply to them. There could be consequences, some which she couldn't being to contemplate, but seeing him --being _with_ him-- would be worth it.

She'd waited five years to see Doug standing out on a porch, watching and waiting for her and framed in a Florida sunset.


End file.
